


falling backward through the glass

by sodiumflare



Category: Skyfall (2012) - Fandom
Genre: F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-05
Updated: 2015-09-05
Packaged: 2018-04-19 04:46:59
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,731
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4733267
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sodiumflare/pseuds/sodiumflare
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You're not sure if Venice was where you were most alive or if Venice was what killed you or if Venice was what made you what you are now. Whatever that is. You like to tell yourself that Venice is a delineator, a clear line from then and now but that precludes the existence of anything happening next. Perhaps Venice isn't a single incident, a long black smear of censor's ink on your record, on your life, but one of several such stripes, running through you like scars that haven't formed yet.</p>
            </blockquote>





	falling backward through the glass

_We have not touched the stars,_   
_nor are we forgiven, which brings us back_   
_to the hero's shoulders and the gentleness that comes,_   
_not from the absence of violence, but despite_   
_the abundance of it. The lawn drowned, the sky on fire,_   
_the gold light falling backward through the glass_   
_of every room._   
_\- Richard Siken, "Snow and Dirty Rain"_

You're standing outside the ossuary and it's burning. You're standing inside the ossuary and it's burning. You're holding Vesper to you, her hand in yours, and you're dancing to Sinatra in a burning church. You're dancing to Sinatra and there's water sloshing around your ankles, around your waists, your necks, and she meets your eyes. She's crying. You know her skin would taste of the sea and she whispers a name and dissolves in a haze of smoke and snow.

You wake up.

In Q branch, Q's desk is festooned with apparently lethal umbrellas but he's making great progress on a virus that will do something remarkable involving tracking financial transactions attached to warlords. He's quite proud of it, and probably you'll wind up with it on a jump drive within the year. You've tried not to notice but in certain lights (every light), the jut of his chin and the smooth curve of his spine could belong to a woman you knew once. There are a handful in this building who can meet your gaze and hold it without a hint of discomfort and he's one of them.

You're not sure if Venice was where you were most alive or if Venice was what killed you or if Venice was what made you what you are now. Whatever that is. You like to tell yourself that Venice is a delineator, a clear line from then and now but that precludes the existence of anything happening next. Perhaps Venice isn't a single incident, a long black smear of censor's ink on your record, on your life, but one of several such stripes, running through you like scars that haven't formed yet.

You've just finished politely terrorizing the poor man assigned to your routine eval when Q brings you a bit of shrapnel from a project he's been working on, a small whorl of metal the diameter of a rifle scope, not because it can exceed the speed limit or call in an airstrike but because he thought you'd find it pretty. You know in a heartbeat that it's a hollow-point that's been fire underwater; it looks for all the world like a jagged metallic flower. You've stopped hearts with bullets like these.

It's one of the nicest gifts anyone's given you since Villiers sent you that scotch when he went out to Indonesia and didn't come back. You slip it in your pocket.

“You’ll muss the lines of your suit, 007,” Q murmurs. You don’t dignify him with a response. Doubtless he measured you up the first time you met.

And when you find Severine in a sparring ring on floor 27, giving as good as she's getting from 004, you're not even surprised anymore. Severine was a whore and then she was a hitman; she was a caged bird and then she was a dog on a chain. She was a victim and now she's an aggressor and she was dead but now she's alive. M was a woman and now she's a man. M was dead and now she's alive. Vesper was hair like shadows and skin like bone drifing in the currents and now her twin builds radios in R&D.

You're not the only one who resurrects around here.

You don't talk to Severine. You know enough to tread carefully around ghosts, especially when it was you that killed her.

You didn’t even know MI6 _had_ a floor 27. The new building dips deep beneath the earth, “Like a great bloody ditch,” M mutters. _Like a grave_ , you think, but in your line of work those have always been interchangeable anyway.

You're feeling sentimental, what with all these familiar faces, so you fuck your mark on your next mission, a quick little jaunt into Gdansk, and he's pretty but he's not art and it's neither necessary nor tasteful, but you've learned to take love where you can. He's thin like a whip and looks perpetually hungry or maybe he's just starving, but when his black hair falls in his eyes -

You get him off and don't bother finishing and you're back in London that evening. Q looks a little scandalized when you give him back your watch and your radio and your piece, and it might because you hadn't turned off your comm or it might be because there's still some flecks of intestine on the muzzle. Could go either way, but he's read your file, it's his job to know you better than you know you in all the ways necessary to keep you alive, and you've heard that your files make for an entertaining read. None of what you do should surprise him anymore. You fucked a woman named Strawberry Fields, for God’s sake, and then she died, because that’s what they do. Because that’s what you do. All of you.

You parked your car somewhere, a while ago; you don’t know where and it’s probably gone now, anyway. Moneypenny calls you a taxi before you leave, perhaps out of some lingering sense of guilt and responsibility. You have some qualms with Moneypenny's marksmanship, but she's turned out to be quite able at effecting equal or greater damage with the right paperwork. You never fucked, although it was a near thing; she kissed like she could taste your secrets, and maybe she could, and it was like looking in a mirror.

You're in a funhouse now, surrounded by mirrors and ghosts, and you wonder what would happen if you stood and faced yourself.

You're a masochistic fuck, so you take your mandated leave and go to Venice. You make the marshal inside of seven minutes, and spend the entire flight quietly, carefully making him very, very uncomfortable. In Venice, you eat ice cream in the sun and kiss a pretty girl next to the Piazza San Marco. By the time you get around the corner, you've forgotten her name, but you send Camille a postcard – she’s in Bogotá these days, presumably raising hell. You get blind drunk in your hotel room and break a mirror with your fist, which turns out to have been a shortsighted move but you're surrounded by reflections and refractions and it's nice to know that some things can still be permanently broken.

Because you can't be bothered to find a proper doctor, your self-administered stitches are infected in few days, which is how you find yourself knocking on Q's door at some ungodly hour. He doesn't look at all surprised to see you, just brings you in and sets down at the kitchen table with some clean towels and a sewing kit and terrifically strong vodka and a knife. It takes some assistance from YouTube when it turns out you'd nicked a tendon, but Q's got good hands and when he's done, he settles you on the couch with a blanket and a cup of tea and tells you he'll call in a favor to get you some antibiotics, but in the meantime, he's going to go back to bed, thanks. The cat decides she likes you and curls between your hip and the cushion.

Every story is a ghost story anyway, and you are surrounded by ghosts. You always have been.

You were in Riga once, a long time ago, when a garment factory burned - an errant spark, perhaps, in a bin of fabric scraps. The doors were locked and the windows barred to the fourth floor, and the place went up like tinder. In the upper windows, bodies crowded, faced with the cruel math of it: the flames or the fall. Some jumped; some didn't. It didn't matter. They died either way.

You wrenched the door open, eventually, but too late, too late.

When you met your fixer later - suit drenched in smoke, fingertips bloody from the door - he arched an eyebrow and said, "My dear boy, did you think you could save them?"

You were younger then. Wiser, maybe.

You’re dreaming now, perhaps: No, of course you are, because it’s Vesper in front of you again, in the choking smoke, in the ossuary, and you touch her cheek: cold, rigid porcelain, and the barest touch of your fingers shatters her into dust.

You wake with a gasp to find the cat, still next to you, tail flicking, and the sun coming over the Thames, comically yellow against the grey-blue dawn. There’s something digging into your thigh; you slot a hand into your pocket, trying not to disturb the cat, and something slices your finger. You pull the object out, feeling sharp metal under your scrabbling fingers; it’s the underwater hollow-point from Q.

The cut twinges a bit, but the metal still feels somehow cool under your skin and there's something about bullets and cold that reminds you of Russia in winter. You've always been fond of Russia in winter. You had a friend who turned out not to be a friend there, and a woman that you thought you loved. You'd wondered if it was something about long cold winters that turned people inside out, and now there's a sense of ice in your spine and the feeling that perhaps it's winter everywhere.

But the blood is warm on your hands.

Q stumbles out of his bedroom later than you would have expected, Batman shorts and a QI shirt. "For fuck's sake, 007," he says around a toothbrush, "It's Sunday. Unless anything goes to pot, it's my day off," and then slams a bathroom door in your face.

You probably had that coming

You have the kettle on when he emerges again - dressed, this time - and he makes obliging noises before readying tea for the two of you. The cat bats at your shoelaces and the discarded bloody gauze on the floor. There's something to be said for the living. Q offers you toast, and the two of you sit in companionable silence at his tiny kitchen table. In the morning light, steam rising from his teacup and crumbs on his chin, he doesn't look like anyone else.

**Author's Note:**

> I tripped and fell onto the Siken train. 
> 
> Also, I don't know anything about cats, but you probably shouldn't let them play with bloody gauze.


End file.
